On a barren world where
air is priceless and women are bought and sold, one man longs for love, but is
she worth the price? In this collection of short stories by science fiction
author Noelle Campbell, Mars is the new frontier where men stake their claims
for a new life. But some commodities are harder to come by than
others--including women, who are often willing to sacrifice everything to
escape an Earth that is no longer free."

Excerpt

Richard “Rock” Klein

Captains Log 14.10.2665

Patraeus Station,

Outside Luna Docking Bay 24 They say space is cold.
But it’s not *just* cold. No one has ever really felt how cold it is and lived
to tell about it. We know instinctively that anything so vast and so empty must
be cold. The irony is that all the things we spend time with while in space
also make us feel cold and empty. We travel in cold metallic ships from cold
empty space to cold empty space.

Machines have no disability like perception. Filled
with Artificial Intelligence and hundreds of processors heating up their hard
drives, they are still only metal and plastic. They don’t care if they sit in
space or in a shipyard for twenty years. They do not desire warmth and
companionship.

They just exist.

If you have one of those new bio-ships it might feel
a little more like a horse than a cold lifeless THING, but in the end, it’s
still a machine. It gives out as much personality and intelligence as an animal
and it only lives to fill its purpose. It knows exactly what it should be and
does. There is no goal for a spaceship to one day become a station. It is what
it is and will never be more.

We try to fill the spaces with ego or warm it with
personality. Those of us who spend so much time in space hardly know what
exaggerated bravado is. We believe the lies we tell ourselves. We believe all
the fantasies we create about ourselves and the things… and people, we love –
or maybe it’s just ‘want.’ I’ve given up trying to tell the difference between
love and desire. I just want warmth.

We leave a planet’s atmosphere to be greeted by a
sheet of black with pinpricks of light. There is so much empty blackness
between each point of light, that space seems cold even without feeling the
temperature drop. We spend much of our time trying to make it feel warm and
filled. The ship is cold and empty this morning and I think of her.

Samaya.

Six months ago she warmed these halls. Maybe it was
longer, but I remember it like it was yesterday. No one has ever turned me on,
out, and completely neutroned me like Sam did. We were good. No. That’s a lie.
We were slammin’ fantastic. I know how good it can be between a man and a
woman. That’s why I hate her and why I can’t get her out of my mind at the same
time. I sit at these docs and the ship is so quiet, all I can think of is the
noise that Sam used to make, the scents she used to leave, the warmth, the
humanity, as flawed as it was. Every time I have to sit and wait for
maintenance, I think of her.

You might look at the logs from a year ago and come
to the same conclusion I did then: She could be a cold-hearted bitch. Still. .
. a cold hearted bitch is better company than an empty starship.

Author
Noelle Campbell

Noelle Campbell has been involved in science media for
more than a decade, covering stories for the entertainment sections of SyFy
(when it was still Sci-Fi Channel), space.com,
and local media in Houston, Texas—the home of the Space Center. As an advocate
for the disabled, Noelle thinks the best way to prepare for the future is to
imagine what it will be like and loves to imagine a life on Mars, which she
does in her first published collection of short stories, Martian Goods
& Other Stories.

Release Date August 15, 2017

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